


the awful edges where you end and i begin

by nicheinhischest



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, assassin au thing idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 23:42:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2486615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicheinhischest/pseuds/nicheinhischest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I could’ve killed you a dozen times,” Zayn tells him, and he means for it to sound like an apology, maybe. Proof of a conscience, even after everything. Even after this. “A hundred.”</p><p>Niall mockingly clicks his tongue in disapproval. “And I’m supposed to thank you for saving it all for a melodramatic stairwell scene?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the awful edges where you end and i begin

**Author's Note:**

> A clichéd hitman falls for his target au, because why not. Also I've just realized that with this, the last two things I've posted had zero ot5 stuff so like, I don't even know who I am anymore. Anyway, **general sort of warning for not very good thoughts and/or people. Zayn tends to get descriptive in how he should kill someone, and neither he nor Niall (nor Louis) are _nice_ per se, so that might not float your boat. If you think I should tag for anything in particular, don't hesitate to lmk.**
> 
> Title from ["The Horror of Our Love" by Ludo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQ-0bBkMIY). And special thanks to k8ie for letting me change my fic at literally the last second - I may have written about 80% of this in a delirious 3am writing session last week lol :S

* * *

“Go on. Take the shot.”

Niall’s voice is small yet determined. Zayn doesn’t lower his gun, doesn’t fire - but his finger twitches on the trigger. He thinks, _Bullet through the gut. Bullet through the head._

_Bullet through the heart._

“Quick and clean,” Niall adds then, shifting just enough to lean against the wall to his right. The broken-down banister of the hallway stairs is just behind him. The elevator of this dilapidated apartment has long since stopped running, but Niall’s right there, right at the top of the stairs. Could just take off if he wanted. Run away. 

He doesn’t. Zayn doesn’t know what it means, if anything. 

“Isn’t that what you’re taught?”

He's favoring his right leg - means someone went for his knee, the bum one, _laid me out for like three weeks last time I fucked it up_ , he’d told Zayn with a laugh, before. There’s a bruise high on his cheek. A cut across the bone, and a rapidly swelling jaw. His bottom lip is bleeding, but he hasn’t wiped it away just yet. 

He looks reckless. 

He looks beautiful.

Zayn should’ve never taken the job.

### 

### 

before. 

“Take the shot.”

Zayn looks down at the glass set in front of him, at the amber-colored liquid settling, and then at the bartender smiling at him from behind the countertop. She wipes down a few glasses, and nods encouragingly at it. 

He lifts the hand holding his actual drink - ordered ages ago, being nursed currently - and says, “No, thanks.”

“C’mon,” she says, nudging it over. “It’s free. Look, I’ve seen about... seven people now? Attempt to coerce you onto the dancefloor so I figure either you’re just set up here to tease everyone, or you’re an awful dancer and you need a little courage in the shape of a shot glass.”

Zayn lifts his eyes to the ceiling, though it’s good-natured, and smiles. Pointedly, he stares right at her as he raises the shot up, tipped her way in salute. He downs it in one, sets the glass back onto the bartop. “I’m not a tease,” he says, eyes on the dancefloor. “I’m just waiting for someone to notice me.”

“Yeah?” She leans forward, elbows on the counter, blond hair falling over one shoulder. “Who?”

Zayn doesn’t answer, but she follows his eyeline anyway. 

“Oh, he’s fun,” the bartender says, like Zayn’s mark has been in here enough times to be recognized here. She says something else, maybe a goodbye, or a have a good night, and Zayn absentmindedly replies before she’s off to take more drink orders. 

His mark is Niall James Horan, aged twenty-five and keeper of Important Secrets on his laptop that’s apparently impenetrable via remote hacking, though according to Zayn’s dossier, he’d been hired because he’s skilled enough to get in if he sees the computer up close and personal. 

After that, it’s simple, really: get close, get in, perform a transfer on the files the mark has hidden, and then put a bullet through his head to keep him quiet. Surveillance first, death second. Discretion an absolute must. Easy peasy. 

His dossier doesn’t say what Niall Horan knows that makes him worth more dead than alive, but Zayn’s not paid to know people’s secrets - or at least, the kind of secrets that get _other_ people killed.

Zayn tells the only person in his line of work he remotely trusts about his assignment - and the trust isn’t much to begin with, because working in a murder-for-hire field sort of ruins whatever chance you could have ever had for healthy, functioning relationships. Louis asked what his plan was, and Zayn had said “Apartment’s like a fucking fortress apparently, so hope he’s at least queer and get an invite home, it’d make things easier than having to fight my way in.”

And Louis gave him a funny, little look at that and said, “Wear that leather jacket with the zippers on the sleeves,” so Zayn _had_ , and now he’s here after following his mark around for the day, at a club in the middle of the city. He’d gone in with a group of friends - a lanky guy in plaid, another with a tattooed feather inked on his arm and a woman at his side. 

Zayn’s leaning against the bartop with a drink in his hand, watching _Niall James Horan, aged twenty-five_ , tug the woman in close, arms around her waist. He dances, sways and shimmies _nearly_ on beat with the music pumping loud all around them; he says something and she laughs, claps him on the cheeks gently to smack an off-center kiss to his mouth. Zayn would think they were fucking, too, only the body language is off.

In a split-second look, Zayn’s mark catches his eye when he spins his friend; it’s mostly just a glance towards the bar to check out the wait for drink, but he glances back a second later, over his friend’s shoulder, still smiling. 

Zayn shifts so his back’s against the bar, elbow planted on the counter behind him. He takes a sip of his drink, and holds Horan’s eye for a longer moment, this time, over the rim of his glass. His grin falls to something quietly curious instead, and he says something else to his friend without looking away from Zayn.

She cranes her neck, finds Zayn in the span of a breath, and before she turns back around, Zayn catches widened eyes and raised brows. He smirks, lips against the rim. 

_Hooked you_ , he thinks.

*

There are plenty of reasons Zayn is good at his job. He’s got no family, doesn’t even have a pet goldfish for company when he’s lonely. He keeps calm under pressure. And he has a face that makes people want to spill their secrets, that makes them open up their homes - and their legs - if need be. Most of the time, they don’t notice the knife in their back until it’s too late. 

It’s an awful, dirty job, but it pays well, and he figures someone has to do it.

This part is easy, even if the rest of it isn’t. There’s a checklist in his head: smile the right kind of smile, stretch out long and lean, draw attention to the mouth. The reactions are so predictable now that he can just go through the motions and still come out the other side with a number (or an exorbitant amount of money deposited into his bank account the next morning).

Zayn has his mark in the middle of the dancefloor now, the drinks Horan - Niall, _Niall_ , he’s got to remember that - bought for the both of them left forgotten at the bar. They’re dancing to some bass-heavy, rhythmic slow number, the hordes of people around them moving along to the beat. Sweat prickles at Zayn’s neck, beads down his back; Niall smiles at him, spread wide, disarmingly charming, and Zayn could reach for the knife strapped to his calf holster right now and bury it to the hilt straight into Niall’s chest. 

When he doesn’t, he tells himself it’s only because his job deserves a little more finesse than a sloppy stabbing in a club that’ll only require more cover up than he’s willing to deal with. Instead, he palms the small of Niall’s back under his shirt, skin sweaty beneath the splay of his fingers. He makes a point to look down at Niall’s mouth when he speaks:

“You live nearby?” 

(At home, he needs to get inside the home.)

Niall’s arms are still slung loose around Zayn’s shoulders as they move, pressed together at the hips; he combs through the hair at Zayn’s nape and tugs, and then Zayn’s got a mouth at the shell of his ear, murmuring with a voice like a smile, “You _do_ know this place has a perfectly good set of bathroom stalls, right?”

Zayn digs his nails in, just above the waistband of Niall’s jeans. Niall leans back a bit, hand shifting to clasp his own wrist instead, fingers grazing between Zayn’s shoulder blades. He arches a brow in question, waiting, and well.

Zayn’s never been opposed to mixing work and pleasure, every now and again.

*

 _Hands around the throat_ , he thinks as Niall shoves him up against the wall of the toilet stall. He undoes Zayn's belt, yanking the button fly open, and gasps out yet another laugh when Zayn leans in to bite hard at his jaw. 

_With a belt. With the lace of his boot._

The bathroom door opens. Zayn pushes him away with a hand to his stomach; Niall shuffles back a step, leans again the opposite wall with mussed up hair and flushed cheeks. There's a lull, the music from the club thumping loud through the walls, and they stare at each other, listen to someone walk off to one of the urinals, and then the sinks.

Niall grins, holds a finger up to his mouth, and Zayn crowds in closer to kiss him, thinks, _Head bashed against the porcelain._

Someone pushes the door open again and stumbles into the stall next to theirs to puke. Niall whispers, "Dulcet sounds to suck a dick to," and Zayn - God, he laughs, in a breathless rush, surprised out of him. His fingers brush down Niall's chest, stop just above the waistband of his jeans to undo the top buttons, tug down the zipper.

His free hand settles on Niall's neck, mouth ghosting over his, lips still quirked into a smile. Then he drops to his knees.

They're going to be bruised by morning.

Zayn's not sure he cares.

*

Niall has two intricate looking keypads - one to get into his apartment, one to get into his bedroom. Zayn doesn’t get to see him enter the second combination, because Niall backs him him against the front door the second it’s closed behind them and he's got his jacket off.

A knee wrenches Zayn’s thighs apart, and Niall asks, “Would you believe me if I said I was paranoid?” like he knows how weird it looks, even to someone who might not know he has something to hide. 

Zayn starts to say, “We all have secrets," but Niall kisses him, slow, and Zayn loses himself in it a little, draws an arm around Niall’s waist, the other curling across his shoulders. Niall turns them with his hands set hard on Zayn’s hips, walks them towards the sofa in the center of the room. He pushes Zayn down, undresses him with a finesse even Zayn can admire - though Zayn stops him when his jeans hit his knees, and carefully removes the piece of clothing himself to hide the sheathed knife while Niall disappears to grab a condom and lube.

The moment he's back, he’s on Zayn again, kissing him, straddling a thigh with Zayn straining upward, Niall's hands cupped under his jaw. And Niall keeps kissing him, and kissing him, until Zayn feels like he’s going to lose it, until he’s unable to catch his breath _let alone_ enough sense to choke Niall out, right there. 

Niall fucks Zayn on the sofa with nothing but their harsh breaths and cut-off moans to keep them company, with the blinds shut and the windows locked, and the keypad next to the room in the corner blinking silently in the distance, ignored.

*

“I’ve got top secret secrets,” Niall tells him later, smiling, once his chest starts to rise and fall evenly. He’s slumped naked against the arm of the sofa, one foot planted on the floor, the other leg folded, toes buried under Zayn's thigh. 

His hand is on Zayn’s ankle, and there’s come drying on Zayn’s stomach and chest, and the taste of it in his mouth, and he’s about to ask where the bathroom is in an attempt to plant a bug or two -

And then Niall carefully unfolds his leg and stands. He tugs his boxer briefs back on, and offers up Zayn’s leather jacket, left to collect dust on the pristine hardwood floor.

“I have work tomorrow,” he says, and it’s genuinely apologetic, but Zayn can hear the dismissal for what it is. 

It bothers him more than he’s willing to admit.

*

"Well?" Louis asks, when they meet up a couple days later. 

Zayn blanches, because he got distracted, and he never gets distracted.

"I got his number?" he says, because he can't bring himself to admit _we fucked on his sofa and then he kicked me out_.

Louis lifts a brow. It's possible he can read Zayn better than previously thought. "Round two, huh," he tells Zayn, chiding, almost. "Knock-out punch, next time."

Zayn can only hope.

*

The second verse is the same as the first, only Zayn goes home with more bruises than before. He counts them in the mirror later, away from Louis' prying questions and the dossier sitting on the oak desk in his room. There's one on his hip, from where Niall held on too tight (not tight enough); another on his thigh when he'd fallen off the armchair (and Niall's lap) and onto the floor, laughing.

Another, from when he planted a bug in the kitchen and Niall walked in, quick, moaning about food, and Zayn jerked back so hard that his shoulder slammed into the edge of a cabinet.

Niall grabs, takes, steals with rough hands and calloused fingers; he does it all while laughing like he's never enjoyed himself more. Zayn would be lying to himself if he said he didn't enjoy it, too.

Maybe that's why he keeps going back.

*

Weeks pass, and then more. Zayn plants seven additional tiny infiltration bugs in Niall's sprawling apartment, but still can't find the laptop. He stays over too late on a weekend night - there's takeout on the coffee table, and it takes everything for Zayn to convince himself it isn't a date. They've been lazily, intermittently kissing on the sofa for an hour, at least, both hard and not doing a single damn thing about it, with Zayn's weight holding Niall down. His mouth is swollen in the best way, and he yawns, at some point, blinks and glances at the watch on his wrist. 

"It's fo - four," he says through another yawn, and Niall gives him a long, considerate look and kisses him once more before he finally, finally drags Zayn into the bedroom for the first time.

He still bodily blocks the keypad. Zayn has to admire the focus, even when he's standing behind Niall, a half-naked - if genuinely sleepy - distraction.

Niall's out like a light in ten minutes flat, and Zayn climbs out of bed and plants two more bugs - one in the room and one in the ensuite bathroom - before crawling back onto the mattress to curl up.

"Bathroom," he mumbles, when Niall turns in his arms and sleepily murmurs an indistinct question.

He falls asleep with Niall wrapped around him, and the gun in his leather messenger bag left in the living room, unused; Niall's heart beats in his chest like a ticking bomb, and Zayn doesn't know whether to clip the wires or let the time run out for them both.

*

"What the fuck are you doing," Louis asks him, two months to the day after he'd first opened the dossier. They're at his, somewhere Niall hasn't been yet, leaning against the counter in the kitchen with beers in hand. Zayn doesn't answer right away because he doesn't know, he doesn't know at all.

He scrubs a tired hand through his hair and sighs, "I think I fucked up, Lou."

"So fix it," Louis says, bitingly unsympathetic. "Because you know as well as I do that there is never a middle ground with this. With whoever is employing you. That's not how this job works."

He shoves at Zayn's shoulder, hard, and maybe Zayn can't trust anyone, but he can see the wild look in Louis' eye and knows this is the closest thing he's got to a friend. To someone who'll miss him if he's gone. "Negotiations. Do not. Exist," Louis emphasizes each word to hammer it into Zayn's head. "If you take any longer, they're going to assume that you broke your contract. And if you break your contract, they'll find a way to break you.

"You can walk away or you can kill him," Louis continues as Zayn drains the last dregs of his beer. "Either way, one of you is dying. And it doesn't have to be you. ...God, do you even care?"

That, Zayn wants to tell him, is the whole problem. He cares. He cares way too fucking much. He wants to tell Louis, _You should see the way his nose wrinkles when he laughs_ \- but Louis' right, he is. A breach of contract means you'll wind up in the hospital for a few weeks at best, or lying unrecognizable in a ditch somewhere at worst.

And a hitman with a hit on his own head? Worth more than any secret, if just for the sheer entertainment value.

"I'll fix it," Zayn whispers, and takes the new beer Louis hands him.

"You better," he says.

*

Niall takes him to a restaurant with a dress code, smiles at Zayn, soft in the muted mood lighting, while they wait for their food and says _I'm glad we could do this_ , and they're _dating_ , and Zayn has no idea how this happened.

He says, "Me too," and thinks, _Bashed over the head with a wine bottle._

Niall pushes Zayn back to the brick of the restaurant when dinner's over, while they wait for the valet to arrive with his car, fuck anyone who's watching, roughing up Zayn's coat in the process. He smiles right up against Zayn's mouth, shuffles in the snow underneath their feet, and it's distressing, is the thing. He's crept under Zayn's skin like a shiver, equal parts charismatic and kind and smart and funny and sexy - 

And bafflingly, resolutely _alive_.

He makes Zayn drive and sucks him off from the passenger seat on the way back to his; Zayn comes with one hand on the wheel and the other fisted in Niall's hair, with Niall choking around him, laughing, always _fucking_ laughing -

Niall sits up and smears the back of his hand across his mouth, leans over the stick shift while they're stopped at a red light so can Zayn taste himself in a kiss. His cheeks are flushed in the moonlight when he pulls away, hair a mess, and Zayn thinks Niall Horan, aged twenty-five, does not deserve to have a bullet put through his head, not when he smiles at Zayn like this.

Zayn falls asleep on his shoulder, later, during the after-dinner movie at Niall's apartment; he wakes up to the end credits and a bit of drool at the corner of his mouth, wipes the latter away with his hand and mumbles, "Sorry, sorry," but Niall just smiles, soft and endeared.

He strokes his knuckles over Zayn's cheek, says, "Let's go to bed, sleepyhead," and turns off the TV. Zayn trudges behind him to his room, practically bellyflops onto Niall's bed and automatically shifts over to the left side because Niall prefers the center - and when did he learn _that_?

Niall cuddles up to his side, leg thrown over one of Zayn's, arm slung low across his waist. He yawns, places an open-mouthed kiss at the edge of Zayn's jaw, and Zayn turns in, circles an arm around Niall's back, leg curled over his hip. Niall chuckles, already half asleep, the laughter rumbling low in his chest. He kisses Zayn on the mouth this time, and Zayn opens his eyes, takes in Niall's mussed hair and sleepy smile and feels something sink like a dead fucking weight in his gut.

"Got tomorrow off," Niall says idly. And, careful: "I think you should meet my best friends."

Zayn tucks a short strand of hair behind Niall's ear and thinks, _Smothered with a pillow_. Niall leans into the touch, eyes falling shut, faint smile tugging at his lips as he brushes his mouth across Zayn's palm. 

"Yeah?" Niall breathes, a question.

"Yeah, okay," Zayn agrees softly.

(He thinks, _Kitchen knife across your throat while you sleep_.

He thinks, _Never, ever stop kissing me_.)

*

Niall's best friends are the people from the club, from the first time Zayn had followed him around for the day. The lankier one is Harry, he knows, and the other is Liam. They shake Zayn's free hand because Niall is holding onto the other, and then the same woman from before - Sophia, she says - hugs him.

Niall's wearing a button up under his coat. Zayn's wearing his softest sweater under his. And he knows by the way Niall's hand holds tight to his as they walk into the bar - the way he leans in close with the fingers of his free hand wrapped around Zayn's bicep - that this is important.

"He won't stop talking about you. It's nice to see him happy again," Harry informs Zayn, once they've settled in, and Niall thumps his head down on the table hard enough to rattle their water glasses.

"Did I say I wanted you to meet my best friends," Niall asks the tabletop, "because I meant traitors."

His knee knocks against Zayn's. Zayn strokes the line of his jaw with his knuckle and smiles.

A brief image flashes, of Niall, and blood, and a nearly-still heart weakly pumping out its last beats. His smile goes tight, and Niall, blinking up at him now, cheek on the table, sits back. 

His gaze flits from eyes to mouth and back, and he leans forward, quick, and kisses the tension away with one, short, sweet peck.

Liam pretends to gag, but he's all smiles, and he plants his elbows on the table. "So, Zayn," he starts, "tell us about yourself."

Zayn shrugs. "Not much to tell."

"Tell us what you like about Niall then."

"Hm." And that smile makes the edges of his mouth turn up again, soft and sweet and entirely of its own volition. "Lots of things."

It's been nearly three months. If he waits any longer, he's going to pay for it in broken bones and punched-out teeth.

It almost seems worth it.

*

"Did you like them?" Niall asks when they're downtown a few days later, idly swinging their hands linked together between them, and Zayn smiles.

"Does it matter if I didn't?"

Niall reaches around to smack him in the chest with his free hand, and he's muttering _don't be a dick_ through a laugh. Zayn catches his hand, drops it and pulls him in with a grip on his hips instead, walks them forward with Niall stumbling backwards over the sidewalk.

It's nauseating. Zayn doesn't want to give it up.

"I liked them," he says, and kisses Niall's cheek before letting him turn the right away again, Zayn's arm slung around his shoulder.

"Good," Niall says, shoulder jerking up when Zayn leans in to bite at it. "Ow - ! It's, um," he laughs, and then makes a soft sound in his throat when the next bite involves the curl of Zayn's tongue licking a thin stripe across the tendon of his neck. "It was really important, that you..." he huffs, "um, all liked each other."

"Yeah?" Zayn says, distracted, brushes his mouth at the juncture where Niall's neck dips into his shoulder. "Why?"

"They're like, well, I don't know - okay," they pass an alley, and Niall yanks him sideways, pushes him so hard against the brick that Zayn's breath gets shoved out of him. "You can't," Niall says, between one sloppy, overwhelmed kiss and the next, "you don't. Why."

"Full sentences would probably help," Zayn teases, hand skating down the length of Niall's back, over his ass, palming him, fingers digging into his inner thigh. 

"Stop fondling me when I'm trying to talk about my friends," Niall says, and rests his forehead on Zayn's shoulder for a minute, a few breaths in and a few breaths out. He's half hard in his jeans, Zayn can tell. They probably aren't going to make it back to his. 

Niall seems to collect himself and then finally says, "They're the only family I've got. So, I don't know. It's nice."

Zayn tries to smile and only just misses the mark. "And you're their only family."

"Pretty much, yeah." He rolls his cheek so it's flat on Zayn's shoulder, facing out, and then picks his head up and squints into the distance. "Have you ever gotten head in a library?" he asks, and Zayn cups his chin to get him to face him.

"Definite bucket list material," he answers, and Niall bites down on a smile.

It fades to something softer as they stand there at the edge of the alley, the public library half a block down. Zayn's hand falls from his chin to his neck, fiddling with the collar of his shirt, and Niall hops up a bit on his toes and kisses him.

It's only once, but it lasts a long time, like Niall's reluctant to part. Zayn can feel him lick his lips, after, and when he opens his eyes, Niall's already got his trained on Zayn.

There's almost no space between them. It's unbearably wonderful. 

Zayn might as well be buried neck-deep in shit.

*

They smoke up at the apartment. Niall is slumped in the armchair with a pipe in one hand and a lighter in the other, legs spread, hips shifting, with Zayn's head bobbing in his lap. The hardwood under has Zayn's knees aching, even with a throw pillow, but he ignores it in favor of making Niall lose control instead.

The smoke billows out of his mouth with a cough, and something resembling a whine, and Zayn digs blunt nails into Niall's thigh, breathes out through his nose. He chokes back a moan of his own; the high's already curling around him, body-turned-lightning-rod, a conductor for rolling waves under his skin that make him feel electric, that make him feel on _fire_ -

He blows Niall until Niall's hips start to jerk up involuntarily, chest heaving, whimpers growing louder by the second, cashed bowl neglected on the side table next to the chair. And when Zayn finally steadies himself in Niall's lap, sinking down slowly onto his dick, Niall's laughing shakily with one hand on his hip and the other splayed across his ribs, forehead pressed to the center of Zayn's shoulder blades.

He mutters a curse, rolls his hips, only there's no where left for him to _go_ , and they fuck with none of their usual ferocity, languid in a way it never is, all burning palms sliding across the muscles of Zayn's stomach and open-mouthed, breathless kisses over his shoulder, and the laptop is out in the open on Niall's desk this time, probably forgotten, but Zayn doesn't spare it a single glance, not one.

He drifts off later with his head on Niall's chest, both of them freshly showered, skin still damp. Neither of them has anywhere to be in the morning, and Zayn closes his eyes and falls asleep with Niall's heart beating on and on under his cheek.

(He thinks _Why did it have to be you_ , and then he thinks of nothing at all.)

*

Zayn wakes up to a hand around his throat.

He chokes, naked under the covers, defenseless in every way that counts, and his fight or flight impulse kicks into high gear: he bucks, reflexively tries to push the weight off and then realizes it's Niall straddling him, completely dressed.

"What - !" he gasps, scrabbling at Niall’s hand, but Niall rests his weight on Zayn's lower half, shin digging into his thighs. His hand tightens, and something taps Zayn in the groin. He flinches, strains his eyes to look down - 

And the barrel of a gun is aimed at his dick through the blankets. 

"Niall," he says weakly, and a small smile flickers across Niall's mouth, even though nothing seems particularly funny. There's a flush crawling up his throat and cheeks, a barely-contained fury in his eyes 

"Who are you working for?"

Zayn opens his mouth to deny, and Niall tightens his hand to cut him off. The pressure on his larynx makes him gag. From out of the corner of his eye, he can see Niall’s gun wave menacingly. "If you enjoy having something down here for someone to _suck_ , I suggest you tell the truth."

He loosens his hold and Zayn coughs out, "I don't - I don’t know.” And with a pained, hitched breath when the muzzle _nudges_ , "I don't _know_ , I swear."

"Too confidential even for the person paid to kill me?" Niall's lip curls momentarily, and yet he somehow manages to look a little smug, too. "Had no idea they were that afraid of me." 

He sits back on Zayn's knees, fingers slipping from his throat, skimming down the center of his chest, gun still pointing at his groin. "I'm not the bad guy here," he says, in a whisper. "I'm not. I'm a hacker, but I'm not the bad guy."

"Please move the gun off my dick," Zayn pleads, and Niall's face goes hard and he jabs Zayn's in the groin again, hard enough that Zayn cries out and tries to curl up before Niall pushes him back down.

"Don't you want to know what I did?" Niall asks him, and before Zayn can answer, he laughs: "I fuck around a lot, hack secure websites of well-known people and companies, their emails, their phone lines. Just to see if I can. Been doing it since I was a kid.

"I found something on big pharma last year. One company in particular. Something that could destroy them. Something that'd expose how they've essentially been killing people with absolutely no remorse or repercussion for years. And I told them I'd release the information -"

"Unless they gave you money?" says Zayn, but -

" _No_ ," Niall says hotly. "No _unless_ , no ifs. I was going to do it."

Zayn shifts. "So why didn't you?"

"They killed my brother."

And here, Zayn remembers Harry saying _It's nice to see him happy again_. The gun is still trained on him, but he shakes his head minutely, asks, "How do you know it was them?"

"Because I know!" he says, too-loud, and sucks his bottom lip. "Because he was sick. And I found out what they were doing way too late to help him. It was them, it was their - it was this _fucked up_ power imbalance, where the little people always lose and I - and then he died, and he was the only blood relative I had left. And I couldn’t stand losing him. So I gave up for a long time."

He sniffles again, and when he speaks, his voice is rusty, croaking, "Then a kid in the apartment across the hall from me got sick. Not even - she isn’t even ten. And I _knew_ it'd keep happening, and I couldn't let it."

“One problem with that,” Zayn says. He tries to sit up, but Niall just shoves him down again, nails marking crescent moons into his shoulder. “It’s been three months, and you haven’t done anything yet.”

"How do you know I haven't?"

"I'd be dead," Zayn says, without hesitation.

Niall looks down, for a long while. "I had to make sure they wouldn't be able to find me, after. And I'm good at what I do, but going completely ghost takes more than a few weeks effort." He pauses, and shakes his head. "Do you even care about any of this?"

Louis said the same thing to him only a short time ago. It feels like forever since that night in the kitchen. Zayn figures he hasn't fixed any of this at all, only made it worse. "It's not my job to care." 

"No. Just your job to kill," Niall says. "Right?"

Zayn closes his eyes and says flatly, "How," because there's no use pretending anymore, is there? Niall roots around his back pocket with his free hand, holds up something miniscule in front of Zayn's eye line; it's too close, blurry, but he blinks and - right.

One of the bugs.

"I do periodic sweeps for bugs. Found it in the ensuite bathroom." He smiles, and it looks sad. "You're the only new person who's been in my bedroom in months."

Zayn says nothing, and Niall laughs wearily. "I'm not going to ask how much of it was pretend," he says. "Because it's so - it's so fucking cliché, and I already know, don't I?"

"You really don't -" Zayn manages, and lets out a short whimper when Niall's gun taps his groin again. "Niall -"

"Shut up," he snaps, brows furrowed, and surges forward to fist Zayn's hair in his free hand. "You don't get to talk anymore."

Zayn shuts up. He studies Niall - they study each other, take in a slope of a nose, the bow of a mouth, a furrowed brow. Then Niall’s expression finally breaks. He cranes his neck the rest of the way and kisses Zayn, surprisingly tender, hand shifting to comb through his hair instead; his other is at Zayn's cheek, gun in hand. 

The cool, metal touch of the side of the barrel rests against his cheek, a deadly reminder that this is not a moment to sink into, but Zayn's heart rams against his ribcage and for a few seconds, for a _few precious, awful seconds_ , his hands fall to Niall's waist and he kisses him back.

When they part, Niall touches his forehead to Zayn's with eyes shut tight. The pads of his fingers drift along to rest at Zayn's chin. "I really, _really_ liked you," he says softly, regretfully.

Then he cups Zayn's face one-handed, rough, pulls away just enough to look at him fully and spit, "Now get the _fuck_ out of my apartment."

He shoves Zayn's face back into the pillow, swings off of him and onto the floor, and backs away to the wall with his gun aimed straight. Zayn doesn't need to be told twice. He climbs out of bed and starts dressing, can't quite keep the note of surprise out of his voice when he asks, "You're just - you're letting me go?"

"Too easy," Niall answers, but the hand holding the gun is shaking, and Zayn thinks he knows the real reason. 

"You've never killed anyone before," he says, tugging his jeans on. He doesn't mean to sound condescending, but it comes out like that anyway. "First time's always the hardest."

Niall steadies his grip with a hand under the handle of the gun, and bites out, "Yeah, well, you would know, wouldn't you?"

He walks forward until Zayn opens the bedroom door, jabs him in the back with the gun when he stis. He can't find his leather jacket; it’s cold out. Niall jabs him even harder.

" _Move_."

Zayn sighs, and snatches his shirt up from where he'd tossed it on the floor last night, grabs his beanie that's stuck on a lampshade. 

"And anyway," Niall continues, "now you can go back to your employer and give them a message for me."

"Wouldn't sending one of my limbs be point enough," Zayn drawls, turning easy on his heel. "And I told you before, I don't know who specifically contracted me."

Niall's mouth twitches into a sneer.

"Tell them I don't go down so easy," he instructs, ignoring Zayn.

Zayn's at the door now, opening it with a hand reaching out blindly behind him. He stands at the threshold, and Niall says, "Tell them it'll take more than a pretty face in my bed to kill me."

For the first time since he's woken, Zayn stumbles: "That wasn't - it didn't end up like that."

"No?" Niall simpers. "What's next, Z, you tell me you and all the other jocks made a stupid bet? Give me a fucking break. I've seen how the movie ends, that's not real life."

Zayn shivers, out in the hallway now, from the crisp late-winter air drifting inside; he didn't even bring a bag, this time. He swallows hard, and lets himself break, for just a moment, because there are no second chances with this line of work. Zayn is only alive at this point because he's good at what he does, and what he's good at is holding guns up to people's heads.

There are no second chances in this business, and there is no such thing as failure - it's like Louis had told him, either he kills Niall or he gets killed himself. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

"The next time I see you," he says, "I'm going to have to kill you."

Niall's smile turns twisted. 

"Can't wait to see you try," he says, and slams the door before Zayn can take his next breath.

*

It only takes Zayn a day to collect himself, but even by then, it's too late. Niall's apartment is empty when he gets there: the keypads are yanked out of the walls, the furniture overturned, the frames ripped out to get to whatever was hidden inside. The bedroom is entirely stripped, save for a lone mattress frame.

A rush job, if there ever was one. Zayn wonders who helped.

There's a paper in the center of the it, folded in half on the hardwood floor. Zayn steps closer, steps over the frame, and he knows before he even picks it up that it's for him, because his name is at the top in careful print.

 _I'm watching you now_, the note says. _You should've done your homework a little better, Z._

There's a smiley drawn at the end the note. Laid out in a neat line at Zayn's feet it is every bug he planted in the apartment. 

(And Niall's got it wrong - Zayn _has_ done his homework. 

That's what scares him.)

*

Zayn’s primary bank account is mysteriously emptied the day after that. 

The lack of surprise is almost funny.

*

Two days pass, all the while Zayn waits for a knock at his door - for the door to get kicked in, to be more specific - that’ll signal penalty for failing. Niall’s gone, and he took all of his information with him, and the last thing Zayn has recorded of him is him standing in the kitchen in his pajama bottoms, staring directly at the screen, wide-eyed and _betrayed_.

(Eventually, Zayn watches his expression harden, and he mouths _Fuck you_. The screen goes blurry, and then blank, the bug tucked safe in his pocket. According to the timestamp, he’d wake Zayn up twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds later.)

On the third day comes a knock, but it’s not the one he expects. 

It’s Louis, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, and he doesn’t say hello when Zayn answers the door, just brushes past him to get into the apartment. He tugs his knit beanie off and combs a hand through his hair, and it’s not until Zayn’s shut the door behind him that he speaks. 

“I have to tell you something.”

Zayn leans back against the door. “Okay.”

Louis’ head is bowed. “I have to tell you something,” he repeats, “but you can’t run off by yourself.”

“Lou,” Zayn lifts his shoulders. “ _What_?”

He nervously wrings the beanie in his hands and says, “Your mark’s still in the city.”

If it’s possible, Zayn slumps even more against the door. Something akin to relief settles in his chest; he thinks he might laugh, but he can't be sure. “I got a call,” Louis continues. “They think he’s going to release everything today. Someone’s been keeping tabs on you, and, and they know -”

Here, he glances up, a glint in his eye that’s just as much reproachful as it is worried. “They know you’ve been fucking, so. You’re compromised. And from what I've heard, they’ll come after you if you try to help him get away -”

“You know where he is?” Zayn pushes off the door, takes a few numb, stumbling steps forward. His chest picks up. “Louis, do you know where he is?”

“Some rundown apartment complex where he used to live - “

He doesn't quite manage to get the rest of the sentence out; Zayn grabs his coat from where he’d thrown it on the sofa, and tries to walk past Louis to head into the bedroom. He needs to grab a gun or - or several, maybe, even a knife if he has to - only Louis grabs him by the bicep and tugs in sharp so Zayn flails wildly before bumping into his side.

“ _You can’t run off by yourself_ ,” Louis hisses. “Do you ever fucking listen?”

“Are you going to help me or not,” Zayn says, staring Louis down.

Louis’ eyes flicker between his, and he asks, “Are you going to kill him?”

There’s a long pause. 

“Yes,” Zayn answers shortly, and Louis nods, only once.

“Then yes,” he says. “I’ll help.”

They’re out the door ten minutes later.

*

The apartment building has been condemned for years, and though it hasn’t been torn down, it might as well be. The brick is crumbling, the front concrete steps almost entirely worn down to rubble. It's foreboding, a teetering ten floors of ruins and previous lives lived, and the hairs on the back of Zayn’s neck rise as he stares.

He looks up. The night seems darker, here, in front of this run-down building Niall used to call home with his brother and father - and Zayn almost wants to punch him for picking someplace so nostalgic, so easy to track.

“You find him,” Louis says quietly, from Zayn's right, “and you kill him. And then it’ll all be over.”

He doesn’t reply. Frayed curtains on the sixth floor sway on the inside, as if someone’s brushed past them hastily. 

“Zayn?”

Zayn hushes him as the curtains move again. The hairs on his neck won’t go down.

He hears the muted sound of a silencer going off three times, and runs inside.

*

There are ways to do these things. Ways to sneak inside without being seen, to climb steps as if you’re weightless. He knows this. He is trained for this. 

He ignores all of it. 

Louis is behind him, trying to catch up - only Zayn’s already rounding the stairwell that leads up to the third floor with no end in sight. He can’t think, can’t hear anything except this ringing in his ears, can’t feel anything but the ricochet of his heart banging against his ribcage, like it knows something he doesn’t, like it wants to climb out of his mouth and run far, far away.

His feet hit the fourth floor landing, begin to round the fifth, and then Louis pulls him back so hard to stop him that he stumbles and slams onto the grimy, musty hallway carpeting. He winces, and in the ensuing struggle, Zayn catches sight of something that makes him tense up: an open apartment door, with a mattress on the floor and empty take out boxes next to it.

On top of a pile of bedding is, and Zayn knows this without a doubt, the leather jacket he'd left at Niall's. The one he'd worn the first night they spoke. Kickstarted into a panic, he moves to get up, only Louis drops to the floor as well, swings a leg around to Zayn’s other side and kneels over him, hands fisting the fabric of his coat. “Whoever is up there will _kill you_ ,” he says, and lifts Zayn up only to shove him back down in attempt to get the point across. “Are you seriously trying to off yourself?”

Zayn shifts, knocks his head against the carpet in frustration and breathes out shakily. "Let me up," he says, and Louis shakes his head.

"I thought you said you were going to kill him."

"I _am_ ," he thumps his head back, harder this time, and the laugh he emits almost sounds hysterical. He finally manages to push Louis off. "I am, I am, I just can't let anyone else do it, I _can't_ -"

"I don't believe you," Louis says, and he shoves.

Zayn falls back, only Louis isn't on top of him again; in the span of the few seconds it takes Zayn to collect his bearings, Louis starts to head towards the stairs leading up. And Zayn stares with a growing sense of dread as Louis tucks a hand into his coat and pulls out a gun of his own. "If you can't do it, I'll do it for you."

Zayn scrambles up, says, "Louis -"

Louis whirls around, points the gun at Zayn for emphasis, finger off the trigger. "You fucked up," he says loudly. There's a pounding noise upstairs, footsteps running down the hall, followed by a heavier set. Zayn tries to push past him but Louis - his finger does curl around the trigger, this time around.

"I'm not letting you die."

"I didn't know you cared," Zayn bites out. 

"You're my friend. He's not." Louis lifts a shoulder. "It's not a hard choice."

He turns back around, slowly starts to climb, and all of Zayn's breath leaves him at once. He grips the stairwell with one hand, relieves his holster of its own gun. 

Hears himself say, "Louis?" and Louis doesn't even get a chance to turn around -

The butt of the gun smashes against the side of his head just hard enough to knock him out, and he falls like a dead weight, tripping unconscious down the stairs and into Zayn's arms. Zayn grunts, heaves Louis' weight and drags him as gently as possible the rest of the way until he can prop him up in the corner of the stairwell.

He's not bleeding, thankfully; Zayn checks for a pulse and finds one, hides Louis' gun back in its holster and leans in with his hand at Louis' nape to touch their foreheads together.

"Sorry, Lou," he says, quiet, and an unconscious Louis doesn't respond. 

Somewhere in the six floors above them, a silencer shot goes off, and then another. Zayn moves in double time to catch up.

*

He finds a body on the sixth floor, but it isn't Niall's.

There's another on the seventh, in an opened room.

Footsteps sound upstairs. He climbs the steps to the eighth floor and when he finds no one in the hallway, begins checking individual tenant rooms, gun held at eye-level, trained on whatever lies in front of him.

Halfway down, a door behind him opens quickly, and Zayn whips around to meet whoever it is.

Niall freezes in place with a laptop bag strapped across his chest and a bruised and battered body. Liam is standing behind him with blood splattered all along his neck and what looks like a just-set broken nose, on the verge of a panic attack, fingers digging like claws into Niall's shoulder.

In Niall's hand is a gun.

He catches Zayn glance down at it, and he says, "There's one left," through a swollen jaw and a cut lip. And, with a murmur, "Guess now we both know what it's like to end someone's life."

After a beat, he sidesteps, and hands it off to Liam, who takes it with shaking hands. "Go downstairs."

"But -"

"Liam, go downstairs." He finally looks at Liam, only manages to get out a _Please_ before Liam’s arms lope around his waist, scooping him up into a hug. Niall grimaces in pain, resting almost entirely on his good leg, and buries his face in Liam’s shoulder. 

When he lifts his head, it’s to smack a kiss to Liam’s temple. He says, “Tell Harry goodbye for me, okay?" and Liam's inhale is trembling when he backs away, but he nods anyway, gun in hand. 

He gives Zayn one long, leveled look, like he’s trying to calculate the time it’d take for him to raise a gun and pray for good aim. Zayn straightens, feels almost like his old self when he fires without second thought. Liam ducks with a yelp; the shot’s purposefully off by more than a few inches. The bullet rips through the crumbling plaster of the wall.

“I missed on purpose once,” Zayn tells him. “I won’t do again. Go downstairs.”

Liam’s gritting his teeth, but he does as he’s told finally, footsteps retreating slow down creaky steps until they can't hear him at all. Zayn hasn't lowered his weapon, but he does give it a different target. 

Niall squares his shoulders. “Go on,” he says - he _goads_. "Take the shot. Quick and clean." He limps to the side, just enough to hold his weight up with the wall.

"Isn't that what you're taught?"

(If Zayn does this, he’s done. The job’s finally over. If he does this, he’s _done_ in more ways than one, and maybe Niall hasn’t run away, but Zayn hasn’t fired, either.)

Niall licks the blood off his lip, and takes a limping step closer, clutching the strap of the laptop bag lying flat across his chest. “C’mon, Zayn. It’s not like I’d be your first kill,” he says, voice no louder than a whisper. He grits his teeth when he takes another step, but won’t let himself wince. “Not like I’d be your last.”

Less than a foot from the end of Zayn’s gun, he stops. It’s aimed dead at his chest now and it’s all so much, so suddenly - Zayn lets out a breath, too sharp to be a laugh, too close to the start of a dry, cracked sob for him to pretend otherwise.

“Why couldn’t -” the words catch, and he swallows. “Why couldn’t you have been anyone else?”

Niall’s expression loses a bit of its edge; he frowns, and they both watch the way Zayn’s gun trembles in his grip. 

“Anyone,” he repeats, jaw tense, back molars grinding. “Anyone else in the whole _fucking_ world, Niall.”

“I’m not, though,” Niall says, and he sounds so tired - bitter and weary and done with a universe that’d put his name on one of Zayn’s bullets. And then, like he’s catching himself, he attempts to school his face to something resembling indifference, but Zayn can see it -

Can see Niall’s eyes go bright, can see his chin quiver, just a touch.

“I liked you so much,” Zayn tells him, and he inhales shakily through a smile. “I thought I - like I really could have -”

He pauses. And Louis had told him before that there was no middle ground, because there isn’t, there _never is_ , not with this.

“I could’ve killed you a dozen times,” Zayn tells him, and he means for it to sound like an apology, maybe. Proof of a conscience, even after everything. Even after this. “A hundred.”

Niall mockingly clicks his tongue in disapproval. “And I’m supposed to thank you for saving it all for a melodramatic stairwell scene? Do it, then,” he says, hands curling into fists at his side. "Do it. Shoot me - "

"Niall - "

"Do it!" he snaps, and when Zayn makes no move to, he carefully drops to the ground with the bag clutched to his chest, stretches out the bad leg and pulls his laptop out. “This is getting pathetic, Zayn.”

"What're you doing?'

"What I should've done a long time ago," Niall says, and Zayn can't see the screen, but he can see the way Niall's eyes roam across it as his fingers fly on the keyboard. 

He glances up. "Liam shot someone today. He hacks like me but it's low level stuff, and I stupidly brought him along and he _shot_ someone for me. _Because_ of me."

His index finger hovers over the ENTER key, eyes on Zayn for a long moment, now. "If I do this, you're dead, aren't you?"

"I'm dead anyway," Zayn says. "I doubt my reputation is going to bounce back from this, if I live long enough to see it. No one wants to hire the hitman who got too close to his mark."

He lowers his gun. Niall sits back on his calves, hand fisted in his jeans to fight against making a noise of distress because of his knee. His shoulders are loose, the muscles in his arms tight. He intones, "Too close."

Zayn nods. Hesitantly, he lowers himself to the floor, in front of the laptop, in front of Niall. "I'm dead," he says, and takes a breath. "But only if they can find me."

(And there is no middle ground, so Zayn forces one instead.)

Hushed, Niall says, "What?"

Zayn turns the safety on, and sets it on the carpet. Methodically, he removes his second gun, the knife strapped to his calf, and lays them out next to the first. Niall watches him the entire time, mouth parted, minute wrinkle between his brows.

There are two dead bodies in this apartment building. Zayn'll be damned if he gives it another.

"Don't," Niall tries, and swallows hard. "Don't say it unless you're sure."

Slowly, Zayn leans over. He reaches out, reaches down, and hits the ENTER key. After a few moments, he asks bemusedly, "Who did I just send that to?" and Niall - he laughs, a huff of breath shoved out of him in disbelief, and shakes his head 

"Everyone," he says, and he won't look away.

Zayn keeps leaning in, chest knocking into the laptop lid, and he stops just short, eyes honed in on Niall's mouth. There's a beat, and he says "Please," and then Niall closes the distance. He sucks in a breath when his lip splits, but neither of them pulls away. There's blood in Zayn's mouth and Niall's hands under his jaw, and he still wishes they were different people - that Niall was _anyone else in the whole fucking world_ but he isn’t. They aren't. 

And maybe it’s a start built on crumbling foundation, but kissing Niall in dilapidated hallway with his unconscious friend slumped against the wall two floors down seems fitting.

Niall's exhale is trembling, and his fingers come down to press against the center of Zayn's chest, pushing gently, enough to break them apart. "This is so fucked up," he whispers.

"I know," Zayn says, combing a hand through the hair at his nape. And: "I don't care. Do you?”

He waits. And then Niall tells him, “There’s a fire escape we can take down.”

“Let’s go,” Zayn says, and they do.

### 

### 

[after.](http://youtu.be/hqxbSggZ-vI)

Zayn's mark is flirting in front of the tiki bar. 

He's got on trunks that sit too low on his hips, shades up and smile bright, so obviously a tourist on vacation. A little younger - twenty-two, maybe, in the right light. But he's cute. Zayn heads over, wrinkling his nose at the sand kicking out from his flip flop - he fucking hates beaches - and thinks, _Poison in cocktail. Brakes cut on rental car._

He doesn't say anything when he sidles up next to them at the bar, just plants his forearms on the glossy, faux-wood top, opens up a menu, and waits for the bartender to look his way. She's busy taking a long list of orders from a group of spring breakers at the opposite end to notice him, but Zayn's mark definitely does.

"And - um," he opens his mouth, glances at Zayn again (he arches a careful brow in response) and laughs. "Um. …Sorry, I. Lost my train of thought."

 _Smothered with a beach towel,_ Zayn thinks with a beatific smile aimed his way.

"Uh," his mark laughs again, flustered. "I'm - sorry, what was I saying - ?"

"What can I get you?"

It's the bartender, polite smile in place, and Zayn's eyes flick down to the menu in front of him. "Can I just get a shot?" he asks, and scans the array of bottles on the shelves. "Don Julio."

"Anything else?"

"Not for me," Zayn says, and turns so he's facing the other two. "Babe, you want anything?"

"Shit," the mark says with a grimace, already backing away, "um - sorry, dude."

 _Accidental fall out of hotel room window._

"Bye," Zayn replies pointedly, and he's watching his shot get set down in front of him when Niall swivels in his high-backed bar chair to stare. 

Zayn pushes the shot his way, holds up a finger for the bartender to signal another. "He was flirting with you," is all he says, and Niall scoffs. He's smiling, too, so Zayn's pretty sure he's only pretending to be annoyed.

"You probably scared him off of flirting with anyone else over his break, Zayn, Christ," he says, and when Zayn just smiles smugly, Niall jabs a finger in his direction. "No, it's not funny!"

"Stop laughing then," Zayn suggests. The second shot is set in front of him then, and he clinks it against Niall's, downs it in the next breath. Adds idly, "I could kill him eight different ways just in my swim trunks."

The bartender trips over nothing, darts a startled look over her shoulder. It's possible Zayn's said that too loud.

"Yeah?" Niall licks tequila off his lips, grabs Zayn by the hip when he shuffles in closer, flip flops scraping across the floor of the tiki bar. "What about that girl, earlier, who asked if she could sit in the open lounge chair next to us, and then slipped you her number before she left."

"I don't even remember her," Zayn starts, and then Niall says, "Hot blonde in a two piece and sarong," and right, okay, maybe he does.

He shrugs, and waits. 

"I could ruin her credit score," Niall says promptly. Zayn rolls his eyes good-naturedly and waggles his fingers.

" _Ooo-ooo_ , pulling out the big guns."

"Empty her bank accounts," Niall continues, voice low, knuckles brushing back and forth, maddeningly light, at the small of Zayn's back. "Steal her identity." He mouths at the shell of Zayn's ear: "Bury her laptop with enough code red buzzwords and files to put her in a secret, underground jail cell for a _very_ long time with one well-placed, untraceable call."

"Talk dirty to me," Zayn stage-whispers, and over the sound of Niall's laughter, the bartender drops a glass. 

Zayn resolves to leave a big tip.

"So much for a low profile vacation," Niall sighs, glancing a kiss high on Zayn's cheekbone. 

"Is it vacation if we're on the run?"

"We're on an island in the Caribbean," Niall says. "I haven't worn anything besides trunks in days. I fucked you in a hotel suite this morning. Pretty sure this is a vacation."

"We're on an island in the Caribbean because we'll be killed if we go home," Zayn starts, but Niall just pulls him in closer with a smile.

"Shh," he says, a hand resting on Zayn's neck. "They’ll have to find us first before that happens, won’t they?"

"And they won't," Zayn says. Niall shakes his head, leans in for a kiss.

"No," he reassures. "They won't."

He palms Zayn's jaw, tilts his chin up. "Got a hold of H," he says. "Liam's okay. He's stopped hacking for awhile."

Zayn looks down and nods awkwardly. He never did apologize for that warning shot. "And, um. And...?"

"Louis' okay, too," Niall tells him, soft, and Zayn nods again.

"Good," he says. He thinks Louis might be happy for him. Eventually. Zayn's fingers close around Niall's wrists, and he asks, "Hey, speaking of bank accounts, whatever happened to the money you took out of mine?"

"What do you think I used to bribe that private pilot to get us out of the States," Niall says. He nods to the bar. "Also what's paying for the three beers I've had this afternoon."

Zayn laughs, fond even as Niall's blatantly admitting to stealing from him. Niall starts listing things it's paid for, "This hotel, an entire month's worth of a mini bar's contents, those condoms we got at different shops, oh and -"

Zayn kisses him, lingering, and Niall makes the softest sound in response. They part, and he pushes at Zayn's chest with gentle fingers, to look at him properly.

"You don't regret it?" he asks.

This is their second stop in four months, and Zayn doesn't even have to think about it.

"I would've regretted finishing the job, more," he says, hands clasped together at the small of Niall's back. Niall strokes his jaw with his knuckles, thumb skimming over cheekbone.

"Where to, next?" Niall asks, then, and Zayn is so filled with contentment.

"You pick," he says. "Somewhere nice. Somewhere we can settle in for awhile."

"Aw," Niall smiles up at him. "Do you want a white picket fence and a dog, too?" he asks, and Zayn thinks, yeah. Maybe he was right, and this _is_ fucked up.

Maybe it's all little too weird: a morally bankrupt couple made up of a thief and a killer, forced into retirement at the tender ages of twenty-whatever -

But they do get some things right, occasionally.


End file.
